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An Otherworldly Opera That Speaks Klingon

INTERPLANETARY Floris Schönfeld, 26, is a Dutch artist who has been developing  u , a Klingon opera, inspired by the fierce warrior race of the Star Trek television series and movies. On Nov. 15, he will present a workshop performance and lecture at the Watermill Center.Credit
Doug Kuntz for The New York Times

WATER MILL

FLORIS SCHÖNFELD, a multidisciplinary artist from the Netherlands, had been only vaguely aware of “Star Trek,” he said, until he started chatting with a friend about it a couple of years ago. He latched on to the idea of a Klingon opera as a way to explore themes he wanted to pursue about merging different worlds.

On a recent walk around the grounds of the Watermill Center here, he had little trouble finding inspiration for his project. A tall stone slab with a curved top and carvings on its sides reminded him of Klingons, the fierce warrior race of the “Star Trek” TV shows and movies: They favor circular, twirling iconography, he said. Later, Mr. Schönfeld, wandering into a forested area, found a hollowed-out wooden drum hanging from a tree. Tapping it, he said, “The Klingons would smash this to the ground to get a sound that resonates up.”

Taking this stroll with Mr. Schönfeld, his first since he had arrived the day before, was a bit like entering an alternative universe. Which is pretty much what he is doing here as one of 15 artists selected for two- to three-week residencies throughout the fall and next spring at the six-acre arts center founded in 1992 by Robert Wilson, the theater and opera director known for his bold experimental vision.

The Klingon opera Mr. Schönfeld is developing is called “ ’u’.” The apostrophes before and after the “u” are part of the title and are pronounced by Mr. Schönfeld like short coughs. The title, he said, stands for universe or universal.

Mr. Schönfeld, 26, who speaks English, German, Dutch and what he calls “basic Klingon,” started creating the opera in the summer of 2007 as his master’s thesis at the Interfaculty ArtScience program, affiliated with the Royal Conservatory, in The Hague, where he lives. With a group he founded, the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble, he performed parts of the opera at the Zeebelt Theater in The Hague, most recently in July. They can be seen on YouTube clips linked to his Web site, www.ktre.nl.

He did not invent a Klingon language. It was created for the “Star Trek” series and expanded by many fans, as numerous Web sites attest. Nor has he sought permission from the show’s creators, noting that his project is a nonprofit research work in progress.

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At the center, Mr. Schönfeld will continue his research and the development of the opera, he said, as he contemplates the numerous artworks Mr. Wilson has collected and scattered around his compound, none labeled. “I’ll give them my own significance,” he said.

That is just what Mr. Wilson intended, said Sherry Dobbin, the center’s program director. Visiting artists are free to interpret the objects, she said, and may move them around (within reason) and use them in performances.

This week, six New York performers and a Dutch colleague, Thomas Johannsen, will join Mr. Schönfeld, and on Saturday, he and his group will present a free public lecture and workshop performance.

Mr. Schönfeld is the lecturer-narrator; he has studied singing, electric bass and trumpet informally and considers himself not the composer of the music but the organizer of the improvisational work done by the group. The performers won’t dress as Klingons: “We are humans making Klingon music,” he said, with a slight ironic edge.

That Mr. Schönfeld would “make something real out of a fictional culture” intrigued the committee that selected him, said Jörn Weisbrodt, the center’s creative director. “Watermill always tries to support the unexpected, the off-the-beaten-path, the surprising approach to creating an artwork.”